


A Man For A Wife

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, Gender Related, M/M, Trans Enjolras, Trans Male Character, Transitioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5019049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A canon era trans!Enjolras/Javert fic for magraithethepeachyguy on Tumblr.</p><p>[Please note that this fic is very much an exception to the coming rule, wherein I'm not really writing fanfic any more, by request or otherwise. See my user page for more information.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Man For A Wife

Javert’s apartments have, always, been kept in a state of obsessive order. He has always been a man for some organization, even in the messiest of baser situations, and his home has never been any exception to the rule; the few books he has are settled neatly upon a half-full shelf, his clothes either hung on a rack or settled away in their drawers, his shoes always settling parallel to the bed when not upon his feet.

With the addition of his wife to the equation, Javert’s meagre lodgings had become mildly more disordered, but not entirely so. Bernadine is a woman of wild passions, and often she’ll forget herself, leave things strewn over the floor and their marriage bed (a bed they share but do not yet well-use, much to Javert’s relief), but she does remember after a few hours’ pause, and without her own reticence, her good friend Combeferre will remind her.

That Combeferre is a gentle soul, Javert supposes, but Javert does not dislike him. Where his wife’s numerous and motley friends are concerned, Javert cultivates a careful neutrality.

At this moment, Javert is struggling with neutrality.

He stops short in the doorway, staring with a straight face, his lips pressed together, at the two dresses strewn on the floor amongst underwear, string, bandages and books, and Javert arches an eyebrow, slowly closing the door behind him.

“Bernadine!” he calls, not loudly, but with an edge of disapproval cutting through his voice, and she comes in from the other room, standing in the doorway. She’s shaved her face, Javert can see from the cuts on her cheek (she’d performed this bizarre and pointless ritual once before, much to his quiet discomfort at the shaving cream on every surface), and her eyes shine brightly as she stares up and into his face. Her hair is tied back, as ever, with a simple black ribbon, but she does not wear a dress: instead, she wears a men’s shirt, tucked into brown trousers, and her jacket is intended for men, too, a deep purple.

Javert considers, for the sake of irony, mentioning to her that in the time of the Roman emperors, purple dye was reserved for the equivalent of monarchy, as young de Courfeyrac had informed him last Saturday with a smirk on his face and a purple carnation in his lapel, but he doubts she will appreciate it.

“Bernadine,” Javert says again.

“ _No_ ,” she says defiantly. Javert peers down at her (he must peer down, for though she is tall for a woman, perhaps 5'7”, he is taller), and then he tilts his head ever so slightly to the right side.

“No?” he repeats, displaying his perplexity. There is a reason, he knows, that her parents – they are of the upper classes, rich and well-to-do – wanted for her to marry a police inspector, a man who would perhaps curtail her more rebellious attitudes, despite his not coming from money or nobility. It is only proper for him to settle himself, so he’d been told, and so he had settled, with Bernadine Enjolras, even knowing of what flaws she must have had. She is a Republican, he knows too well, and a girl with many ideas in her head: neither, of course, are ideal for a woman, and especially not for a woman of such parents.

“Benoît.” Javert stares at her.

“Pardon?” he repeats, not irritably, but with a sort of tired confusion.

“I do not wish for you to call me Bernadine. Ever, from here henceforth. Only Benoît,” Javert glances at her clothes once more, so masculine, and he realizes, glancing at her chest, that she has somehow flattened it and bound her breasts from rounding outwards from her sternum. “My name is Benoît Enjolras, and I shall be enrolling myself in classes in the college here, as a man, for I am a man. Here, I am Benoît Javert, as we are married, but otherwise I shall be a young man with no wife and of course no husband. Every day of my life I have felt a man’s heart beat in my chest, and every day I have been told to ignore its beat for the sake of a rhythm I have never heard – I am not a woman, René, and nor have I ever been. I shall live as a man, as I feel I am, and that will be the end of it!” With the squared chin and the hair drawn back from her –  _his_  – face, Benoît is truly radiant, as they say an angel is so. Not bright in a way that is warm, but in a way that implies future destruction. It makes Javert mildly uncomfortable.

“Very well,” Javert says briskly, “Might you pick up your things from the floor, then, with that done?” His wife is a man – so be it. He had not wished for the tender touch of a woman to fuss over him as he returned from his day’s labour, and he had been glad to discover Bernadine would do no such thing: now, with this Benoît, it is no worry at all.

“What?” Benoît demands, his cheeks flushed with pink. The radiance is gone from him, now, and Javert feels his shoulders relax by the barest fraction.

“You have left your things all over the floor. Two dresses, many books-”

“Do you have no argument?” he interrupts Javert, which irritates the inspector, but he does not say so, and merely stares down at Benoît with his brows furrowed. “You have no protest as to my gender, or to my enrolling myself in studies, or my name?”

“I have protest,” Javert says – not, in his own mind, indelicately - “to the things you have left upon the floor.” Benoît stamps his foot.

“You will ignore what I have told you?”

“I have not ignored you, Benoît. I have listened to your words, I have remembered what you have said, and it is time to proceed. Perhaps we might begin with your picking your things from the floor.”

“I’ve half a mind to strike you!” he snaps, crossing his arms over his flat chest (does that hurt? It must, some, but Javert will not point out the fact) and  _glaring_  at his husband.

“If only you could reach,” Javert retorts. “What is it that you want from me? I merely wish for you to clean your mess from the floor.”

“ _I_  merely wish for you to treat me as a man!”

“I had no intention of doing otherwise. You shall provide for yourself, we shall divide our fees for this lodging, and I shall use this name, Benoît, and treat you as a man.” Benoît peers up at him, blinking, twice. Javert does not stir under that intense and fiery gaze, as he has seen many a man do: Javert is not to be intimidated by his skinny rake of a wife, regardless of his gender.

“Oh,” he says. It is perhaps unorthodox, but Javert has no friends to explain unorthodox notions to, and the weight of explaining such things to Benoît’s own friends is not upon his shoulders – it is no concern of Javert’s, except, of course, that Javert is now to live and share his bed with a man instead of a woman. “I thought you would be angry.”

“I am not,” Javert says. There is a long pause between them, and Javert says, “Except-”

“I’ll pick them up now!” Benoît says loudly, and he stalks past Javert, plucking each article from the ground and settling each and every one of them into their rightful places, but for the two dresses, which hang over his arm and drag over the wood of the floor. He then hovers, uncertain, in the centre of the room, with one of his hands flat over the fabric, steadying it. Javert is not a man who appreciates beauty in most aspects of his life, but he appreciates the beauty in the hands of his wife. He had played many instruments from a very young age, when he had been yet a girl, and now his hands are toned, slender and white, and often stained with ink. Javert is often made suddenly aware of the differences in their colouring, when their hands are side by side.

“What are you to do with those?” Javert asks, primarily to avoid his dropping them onto the ground again and perhaps leaving them there for all eternity, regardless of Javert’s protests or those of Benoît’s good friend Combeferre, doomed to be stepped over and lightly avoided with each step.

“I don’t know,” Benoît says lowly, looking at Javert’s knees instead of his face. “I have no wish to keep them. I feel- I do not like to wear them. They feel as if I am wearing someone else’s skin, a costume that does not fit me: merely to glance at myself in a mirror, in one of these gowns, makes me feel ill. I am nauseated at the sight of my own body, for it does not feel like it is my own. It feels like the dress itself steals a part of me, when I am forced to settle within it.”

“Oh,” Javert says, for he has no other response. He cannot fix the other’s discomfort, nor his unhappiness, and he feels lost: he can focus, as ever, only on pragmatism. “You ought keep one, for the next visit of your parents. They will not stand for your current dress.” Benoît gives the most minuscule nod of his handsome head. “You might–” Javert hesitates, thinking of Benoît’s de Courfeyrac with some reluctance, but he finishes with, “You might offer it to your de Courfeyrac. He will burn it.”

Benoît’s eyes light up.

“ _Yes!_ ” he says delightedly. Javert adjusts the cuffs of his sleeve, and Benoît drops one of the dresses aside, to be brought with him to the Café Musain when he leaves later this night to be amongst his friends. He. Him. His. Javert is married to a young man. It is strange, surreal, but he does not have any particular wish to argue. He had not especially wished to marry a woman, either – what matter is it? Benoît walks away, and then turns, looking back to Javert. He rushes, then, and he comes forth, reaches – for a moment, for a bare moment, Javert believes he truly  _will_  strike him, but Benoît does not. He merely grasps at Javert’s collar and pulls, abruptly, before pressing his lips to Javert’s in a sudden kiss.

They have kissed before, but it has been chaste, upon cheeks, foreheads and hands – cthey kissed on their wedding day, but it had been as simple as a press of mouths to the clap of a waiting audience that neither of them knew all that well. This is different: Benoît draws back his lips, cups Javert’s cheeks and lets the dress fall to the floor (Javert will ensure he does not leave it there), and they kiss for a few moments, lips drawing together and then apart, and it is strange, the sensation, electric and pleasant and wonderfully  _warm_ –

Benoît draws back, breathing in heavily, and Javert stares at his lips, usually a pale pink but now stained a deeper red with the draw of blood to the flesh. They are beautiful, Javert can note objectively, and subjectively.

Javert clears his throat. Affection between them has not ever been so present, for they are not in love, and although they are married it has been more political on both of their parts than at all romantic. He worries, for a second, that Benoît will perhaps try this again, at some point. He worries, for a second more, that he never will again.

“I’ll put this away,” Benoît says lowly, and he turns away and walks briskly in his new, men’s shoes. Javert watches after him, for a second, and then turns to the kitchen to make for them both some cocoa for the evening chill. There is nothing he has to say, after all, and Benoît had said all he had wanted to say, Javert supposes, with his mouth.

Javert feels his hand draw to his own lips, his fingers drawing over his own skin, his slightly chapped, dry lips, and he feels the ghost of his wife’s mouth there.

“You’re smiling,” Benoît says quietly, seriously, from the doorway. Javert stops. Benoît does not. He continues to smile with all the warmth and joy of his comparative youth, and he seems so happy, so very content, leaning there against the frame of the door. “Thank you, René,” Benoît says.

“Yes,” René affirms, as if it is a reply, and then, “Does it hurt your chest?”

“The binding? Some.”

“Very well,” Javert says, and pushes a mug towards the other man: his wife. “Drink.” And Benoît does, hiding a smile in his cup, and Javert averts his eyes.


End file.
